Ted Cruz and guns

Ted Cruz is in the unique position of being a Senator who’ll most likely never run for POTUS since he was born in Canada. His professional background is second to no one’s (particularly the current POTUS’s),

Before being elected, Ted received national acclaim as the Solicitor General of Texas, the State’s chief lawyer before the U.S. Supreme Court. Serving under Attorney General Greg Abbott, Ted was the nation’s youngest Solicitor General, the longest serving Solicitor General in Texas, and the first Hispanic Solicitor General of Texas.

In private practice in Houston, Ted spent five years as a partner at one of the nation’s largest law firms, where he led the firm’s U.S. Supreme Court and national Appellate Litigation practice.

Ted has authored more than 80 U.S. Supreme Court briefs and argued 43 oral arguments, including nine before the U.S. Supreme Court. During Ted’s service as Solicitor General, Texas achieved an unprecedented series of landmark national victories, including successfully defending:

U.S. sovereignty against the UN and the World Court in Medellin v. Texas;

The Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms;

The constitutionality of the Texas Ten Commandments monument;

The constitutionality of the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance;

The constitutionality of the Texas Sexually Violent Predator Civil Commitment law; and

The Texas congressional redistricting plan.

The National Law Journal has called Ted “a key voice” to whom “the [U.S. Supreme Court] Justices listen.” Ted has been named by American Lawyer magazine as one of the 50 Best Litigators under 45 in America, by the National Law Journal as one of the 50 Most Influential Minority Lawyers in America, and by Texas Lawyer as one of the 25 Greatest Texas Lawyers of the Past Quarter Century.

From 2004-09, he taught U.S. Supreme Court Litigation as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law.

Prior to becoming Solicitor General, he served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission, as Associate Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice, and as Domestic Policy Advisor on the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign.

Ted graduated with honors from Princeton University and with high honors from Harvard Law School. He served as a law clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist on the U.S. Supreme Court. He was the first Hispanic ever to clerk for the Chief Justice of the United States.

So far he is the only senator who has dared challenge the many blatant falsehoods President Obama and many congressional Democrats have been pushing regarding guns, in particular the bogus claim that 40 percent of gun sales are done without background checks.

To add to the Dems’ outrage, Cruz is demanding that Chuck Hagel disclose the source of funds Hagel receive for speeches (particularly $200,000),

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on Saturday, February 23rd, 2013 at 11:43 am and is filed under Democrats, politics, Republicans, Senate.
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I’m not so sure being born in Canada to an American mother disqualifies Cruz; Congress has broad discretion to set the terms of citizenship under the Constitution and immigration acts, and the Naturalization Act of 1790, authored by members of the founding generation, expressly defined “natural born citizen” to include people born abroad to parents who are US citizens. (Thus sparing the children of US diplomats, among others). Granted, that act has been superseded, but, to conservatives, it should be a big clue about what the people who wrote the Constitution intended.

Regardless, I’ve become a big fan of Ted Cruz. To paraphrase what Lincoln said of Grant, “We can’t spare him! He fights!”